Notes from a sporting week 28/01/08

What price loyalty?

There has been a lot of discussion over the last seven days about loyalty in sport, notably in football, but also within both codes of rugby. A whole host of incidents have occurred that demonstrate the varying degrees of player to club loyalty in team sports.

It came to a head this weekend with the supposed comments of Tottenham Hotspurs’ French fullback Pascal Chimbonda, who according to The Sun newspaper declared; "Kevin Keegan has approached me and they've offered me more money. I am definitely leaving Spurs. It's all about the money. I don't care about the (Carling Cup) final, I don't care about the cup."

Chimbonda is hardly the pin-up boy for the one-club player having handed in a transfer request to then Wigan manager Paul Jewell, dressed in his playing kit, having minutes earlier helped Wigan maintain their Premier League status on the last day of the season against Arsenal in 2006.

In the usual merry-go-round of the transfer window he is not alone. His compatriot Lassana Diarra left Arsenal for Portsmouth and announced that he was only there until a bigger club came in for him. Having been at Chelsea and Arsenal already one can only guess who this bigger club will be.

It is interesting that Chimbonda wants to go to Newcastle, hardly the bastion of loyalty themselves, just ask Sam Allardyce, Glenn Roeder and Sir Bobby Robson, who were booted out the minute results took a down turn.

As a club they of course are not alone. Who’d want to be incharge of Liverpool with owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett breathing down your neck. Rafa Benitez can ask where the loyalty that existed for years between club and employees has gone, not least when the American pair are happy to go off and chat with Jurgen Klinnsman when they don’t get an immediate return on the summer spending. Where to, Benitez must wonder, went the loyalty of the Moores family, who ran the club for years but openly courted new owners who would finance the new stadium.

Which brings us back to Tottenham It has been funny to read the mutterings of Spurs fans on the web, after all they were up in arms last September when chairman Daniel Levy and director of football, Damien Cobilli were photographed courting then Sevilla manager Juande Ramos behind then Spurs manager, Martin Jol’s back. Who too can blame Chimbonda for feeling a little insecure about his place when the club have just bought 17 year-old Chris Gunter from Cardiff and have been openly courting Ranger’s Scottish international Alan Hutton.

It is not just football where the question of loyalty is cropping up in conversation. Steve Borthwick the Bath captain recently announced that he would be leaving the west country in the summer for the charms of Watford where he will play for Saracens. The cry went up, ‘where’s the loyalty to the club who nurtured him from youth, who made him an international?’ At the same time Jonny Wilkinson was being held up as the last remaining one club man after signing a two-year deal with Newcastle, who did for him what Bath did for Borthwick.

What though did Borthwick owe Bath after ten years service? At 28 years of age he has the right to chose his next step and who knows what the background to the situation is. Likewise Wilkinson, though with England’s golden boy scratch beneath the surface and all is not what it appears. At 28 he has played very little European Cup rugby and the two years he has signed means he has enough time to see if the potential at Newcastle puts them at Europe’s top table, but still leave him enough time to join a bigger English or French club who can allow him the opportunity to fill that gap on his cv.

In the 13-man code Paul Cooke allowed his loyalty to his childhood heroes Hull Kingston Rovers to overshadow his contract with city rivals Hull FC. As such, after breaking said contract he is now sitting out the first six weeks of the Super League season, childhood ties running deeper than his name on the contract.

Back in the good old days things weren’t always what they appeared either. Sir Tom Finney, who is a saint at Preston North End for his years of service wanted to leave in the late fifties. Palermo offered him far more than he was earning under the maximum wage, but he was unable to break free of the shackles imposed by the retain and transfer system that left players as club presidents’ serfs. Even Bobby Moore, West Ham’s favourite son nearly missed his greatest hour as he wasn’t registered with a club after the end of his contract at Upton Park. It needed club manager Ron Greenwood to come to the England team hotel so that Moore could sign the contract that allowed him to be registered for the 1966 World Cup. It is also a well known fact that until he left the club in 1973 his relationship with Greenwood was in pieces as he wouldn’t sanction a move to Tottenham. But ask any West Ham fan and this will have little baring on their view of Moore.

In truth the idea of loyalty in sport is restricted to the fans. Sure there are still instances of one club players out there, but look more closely and it is obvious that they are restricted to the teams who can challenge for honours and pay the highest wages. Would Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes have stuck around Mancheter United if they weren’t challenging for honours every year or rewarding them handsomely? Likewise Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher at Liverpool or John Terry at Chelsea.

Whilst supporters want the players to love the club as much as they do, I’d rather have someone like Chimbonda or Diarra who admits to only looking out for number one, rather than kiss the badge and then jump ship, at least you know where you stand with them. Hopefully the desire to earn the biggest crust will at least push them to peform to the maximum when they are playing and why would a French-African have anything but professional feelings for Portsmouth? Sport is business and supporters need to realise this. So long as professional pride exists, then in most cases that is the best that can be expected.

Farewell to a modern great:

It will be with great reluctance that Cricket Australia says goodbye to wicketkeeper-batsman Adam Gilchrist. The current test match with India will be his last and as befits his glittering career it looks likely to be a win and he will finish completely at the end of the one-day season.

His statistics paint a pretty impressive picture; he has scored 5,556 test runs, scored 17 centuries, took 377 catches and 37 stumpings since his test debut in 1999. In the 2006 Perth Ashes test he scored the second fastest test centruty off 57 balls, one shy of Sir Viv Richards’ record. He has won three World Cups in 1999, 2003 and 2007, with his innings in last year’s final crucial, hitting 149 from 104 balls to help beat Sri Lanka.

The statistics do not tell the full story. Aside from his wonderful ability he was a breath of fresh air in a sport that is becoming ever more cynical. He was one of the few players who would walk whether the umpire had given him out or not. Likewise if didn’t make a catch he would own up to it. Furthermore his swashbuckling approach to cricket completely changed the face of test matches, his one-day approach to scoring meaning that run rates went up, allowing Australia to further dominate and forced the rest of the sport to follow suit. It is no surprise that England targetted him during the 2005 Ashes series and the fact he failed to perform meant that for once he was on the losing side.

When Gilchrist became Australia’s wicketkeeper he was taking over from someone the country felt was irreplacable in Ian Healy. Now it is Gilchrist that is seen as irreplacable, which means that the annointed heir, Brad Haddin has a massive pair of shoes, and gloves, to fill.
JI 28/01/08